


Pros & Cons

by Pipsqueak (Skyhonni)



Series: Not Much (But They’re Trying) [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Also kind of, College, Drinking, Drunk Sex, Drunken Shenanigans, Drunkenness, F/M, Libraries, One Night Stands, Reader is a YouTuber, Reader is a librarian, Scent Kink, Scenting, Sort Of, Soul Bullshit, Youtuber AU, for now, hangovers, if i get this mojo again, might be a series?, not really - Freeform, papyrus is a youtuber, reader has a knack (can you spot it?), sans drowns himself in both homework and self pity, sans is a cameraman, sans is pining but he's also so fucking confused, written in both present and past tense becasue fuck you!, you are seriously clueless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26456896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyhonni/pseuds/Pipsqueak
Summary: You wake up in a sort-of-not-really stranger's bed, naked, well-fucked, with a splitting hangover and a thousand dollars more than you started the night with.Sans wakes up without you in bed and almost gives up on the universe as a whole, so you make quite the pair.•°•°•°•Based on your memories of last night, they might’ve been even farther down the bottle than you—and yet somehow they weren’t terrible. You feel great about it, even with the chasms of blank moments that lead to flashes of remembering. You knew a few things already: they were a great fuck, you enthusiasticly consented, and at one point you both burst out laughing because a whoopie cusion tooted out a pitiful fart from underneath your elbow during a position change.Well, that’s a keeper, folks. You might just ask for their phone number if the morning goes well.***[Y’all might want to sub or bookmark the series, not the work. This is gonna be like oneshots but with a plot. Sort of.]
Relationships: Sans (Undertale)/Reader
Series: Not Much (But They’re Trying) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923259
Comments: 15
Kudos: 169





	1. You Wake Up Three Times

**Author's Note:**

> Alright guys, yes, I totally deleted Walking on Wires and Powerlines. when I can re-read it as if it's a completely new work and edit the shit out of it then I'll repost it. in the meantime, have this fuckin' mess, which is only a little bit influenced by WoWaP and a lot a bit influenced by absolute chaos. *chefs kiss*

Someone very dear to you once said, the best thing you could do on a dreary morning was not get out of fucking bed.

Since you are, apparently, not in your own bed, you aren’t exactly sure if that advice applies in this situation or not. It _is_ dreary—the clouds are a blanket heavy in the sky and the rain is pissing like you might be in a few minutes, so that part is more than covered. But.

Does one sleep in and cuddle with a stranger after a one night stand you can barely remember? 

If you focus enough, you can vaguely make out the choppy drunk memories of rough fingers in your braided hair and—whew they were pretty girthy, but you could know that just from the feeling you got when you woke up and shifted your hips a little.

You lay there and try to remember more as you steadily breathe, staring out of the window right across from you. The blinds are pretty fucked, all bent and torn. Actually, from what you can glance at where you’re wedged, so is the rest of the room. Clothes all over the place, socks hanging from the nightstand light, wrappers for sweet things you’ll probably get down and dirty with tonight yourself if your hangover turns out to be absolute shit.

You aren’t gonna judge when your own room looked like a hurricane met an atomic bomb shockwave not even two months ago. Your only saving grace was a sudden hyperfixation on storage space and organizational YouTube videos, and a very lucky temporary lift in your depression severity and a nice check from your channel revenue after a hit vid.

You make a face and feel your cheeks heat at the sudden flashbulb snippet: you, your face pressed up into the pillows, gripping the cotton bedspread as they pulled your hips back onto their cock; the way it felt as you groaned throatily and shifted to push back farther, breath hitching as they hit your g-spot just right and kept going at it like they knew what they were doing—

—is it hot in here or is it just you?

Ouch. You wince and fight the immediate reaction to slap your hand to the top of your head, instead turning your face into the pillow and pushing it into the fabric. It smells faintly like cigars and some sort of tea tree shampoo, but mostly of musk and sweat. Whew, okay, that’s a bit of a boner-killer. Thinking sexy thoughts got your blood pressure up, and with that came a faster, louder pulse. Maybe if you stick your face in your cuddle-buddy’s armpit and snorted it like a line then you’d be left dry as a desert down below. Or maybe they had a good taste in deodorant and you’d find them even more attractive, who fucking knows.

Does the splintering headache you have pounding behind your eyelids call for raiding some poor rando’s bathroom cabinet in the hopes of a painkiller? ...Maybe, you think. Depends on the hypothetical distance you’ll have to travel. Unlike your aunt Beck, you were not puking in gran’s 150-year-old radioactive glow-in-the-dark vase and pretending it was the dog. In fact, you think proudly, you are not going to hurl at all. Instead, you’ll probably just slump over in the hallway and pass the fuck out.

You sigh just enough to let out a smidge of your confliction but remain careful enough not to jostle whoever was behind you awake. Because boy howdy do they have a grip on your waist, as if they’re holding on for dear life.

...It isn’t horrible. If you’re gonna be honest with yourself—which you usually aren’t, but what the hell, might as well give some self reflection a try every once and awhile—it is actually pretty nice. You like the pressure of their fingers against your upper waist.

If they traveled just a few inches higher they’d graze the lower part of your breast, and even with the angry drumbeat in your forehead that still sounds pretty neat.

You take a second to just let that sink in. The fact that you feel horny at all after a blurry night and waking up in a stranger's bed should probably say something about your mental state, but honestly besides the volcano currently threatening to erupt behind your temples you were an easy A+.

Wack.

This isn’t exactly your MO. To be honest, this is way out of left field. You’re not even really on the field at all. _Usually_. Last night you drank your way onto the pitch, apparently, and threw that ball as hard as your wimpy little arms could. What’s surprising is that whoever you aimed for didn’t immediately call you out, or whatever stupid fucking baseball term that meant getting your ass thrown from the game for being very bad at your job and also extremely drunk.

Based on your memories of last night, they might’ve been even farther down the bottle than you—and yet somehow they weren’t terrible. You feel great about it, even with the chasms of blank moments that lead to flashes of remembering. You knew a few things already: they were a great fuck, you enthusiasticly consented, and at one point you both burst out laughing because a whoopie cusion tooted out a pitiful fart from underneath your elbow during a position change.

Well, that’s a keeper, folks. You might just ask for their phone number if the morning goes well.

According to the old, slightly cracked clock on the nightstand it is currently seven in the morning and some change. You aren’t gonna be spouting your usual eloquent bullshit until at least ten. The headache keeps banging its pots and pans just enough to remind you that you have a body and sometimes that isn’t a thing to look forward to.

...might as well just go right back to sleep, really.

×

You’re drifting in and out of pain-reality and dream-state when they wake up. The sun has decided it’s time to poke its head out of the clouds, so when you open your eyes a smidge your head threatens to sue a burning ball of gas.

The sniffle directly into your hair and the immediate stillness afterwards prompts your dozing to let up enough to be mentally present.

They freeze and stop breathing and stay like that for longer than you thought humanly possible. For some reason that kick-starts a new revelation—maybe they’re a monster? There were quite a few at the party you _do_ remember. Plus, drunk-you is unapologetically bolder than sober-you, and the curiosity you harbor to all things mixed with the drive to try stuff at least once is a hell of a drug.

You test the waters a little. Move a bit. Just your leg, a small shift in the covers. They inhale a smidge—a sharp yet quiet sound—but it cuts off midway and they make a little noise in the back of their throat. It sounds hurt, but not in the way that would turn you off. It’s the rough kind of hurt, the one you know all too well when it comes to finding out you like something more than you thought.

But they don't fucking move an inch. Not even a centimeter.

It’s sort of hilarious after about two minutes of sneaking glances at the clock. They must not know what the fuck to do with you. That, or this isn’t their room either and they’re freaking out about _two_ things.

You think idly about things _you_ should be freaking out about, but all it comes down to is laundry, really. Like, all of it. You’re—well, you _were_ wearing your last clean pair of jeans last night. Fuck knows where those are, you’re currently in the pantsless department.

Laundry leads to thinking about that documentary you watched last week about how laundering money became a phrase in the first place, and all the training videos about it you had to endure when you worked at Western Union. Which leads to that old co-worker you didn’t like because he kept on stealing your Dr Pepper from the work fridge but claiming it couldn’t be him because he hated the stuff.

Man, fuck that guy. Not literally, as the person behind you got that covered pretty well last night, but metaphorically, nonsexually, and with a rock.

Your cuddle-buddy relaxes with the tick and tock of the clock; their hand wavers from where it clutches at your bare skin. They must either make a really good move or a complete miscalculation, as that hand grazes the underside of your tit in such a soft, gentle way it makes your breath hitch and your skin tingle. They freeze again. Gently move their hand and arm completely off you. Flip over to face away.

Damn it.

Miscalculation it is.

At this point, it’s a game of chicken. And you ain’t gonna lose. If they’re dedicated to staying exactly where they are and pretending as if them refusing to get up is the best idea they got, then fuck if you’re gonna mess up their plans. You could likely drop off into dozing land again if they don’t shift around much.

So you wait.

This totally won’t bite you in the face.

×

Yep.

When you find yourself getting lurched back into the land of reality, it’s because your bladder has decided that this bout of inaction sucks and you’re stupid. Which is fair. 

You glance at the clock. You’ve been asleep for another hour, which is not bad, all things considered. And your cuddle buddy isn’t gone. In fact, you’re about ninety-five percent sure they’re asleep. The bed dips behind you and you can hear their breathing, slow and steady.

You brace yourself. The next few minutes are going to be pretty tough on both your stomach, bladder, and head.

Also. If you look back before you book it to the bathroom? Then the mystique will be gone, but you’ll know.

You weigh the pros and cons. Pros: you get to know who fucked you into the mattress with a dick that could rival one of your ex’s monster strap ons; you can assess if the situation calls for a fuck-and-run sort of deal; you can know the face of the person who made you cum from just penetration alone, which is rare for you.

Cons... Well, you could _know-_ know the person. That’s a definite con if it turns out to be someone like— _ugh—_ Jerry.

It’s also _entirely_ possible. Like, the odds swing in that direction no matter how you try and fight it. The party you started at was full of monsters you sort-of-knew, and Hopper has been trying for a while to get you with someone. Maybe she succeeded last night? Oh, that would look bad on your scoreboard...

...Or you drew a complete wild card instead, but you think that would be in her favor anyway. She is dead set on you fucking one of her friends for an extra juicy square on her bingo card she jokingly made a few months ago during an ill-advised non-sober live stream.

The funny thing is, you’re more upset that she’d be a whole step ahead of you in the game than you are waking up in some stranger’s Depression Cave fully nude.

You slowly slip out of bed. You don’t wanna wake up your cuddle bud, that would be both rude and sort of awkward at this point. You’ve had at least three chances to poke them awake and act like an adult who doesn’t take the _act like you’re asleep_ route, and you’ve passed on every opportunity.

You take too long thinking about it without acknowledging the world around you and unbalance off the edge of the bed, landing right on a pile of what feels like your jeans and bra with a dull _thud._ Some scooting and rolling has your suspicions confirmed. Your shirt is a few feet down towards the end of the bed.

Sweet. That works. You sort of hadn’t thought of other people being in the house, and even if you have no shame whatsoever, it’s still not exactly the greatest impression on potential family members or roommates to come waltzing in within your birthday suit and nothing else.

You change on the floor because getting up sounds like an issue for one-minute-in-the-future you to handle. Your head throbs and your bladder protests as you contort to pull up your jeans without sitting up. You can tell that today is going to be full of glasses of water and multiple toothbrushing sessions.

You were supposed to film a video today about making a home-made lava lamp, but you can tell that’s not on the table anymore. You have a few lazy ideas for possible content that could still do well, and one of your past hangover vids is one of your best performing. Not much of a loss.

Whatever, it was a hobby in the first place. It wasn’t super serious if you missed an upload tomorrow anyway.

Your wallet and your phone are still in your pockets. Or, they were until you put your jeans on like a crackhead. Now they’re on the ratty discolored carpet beneath you. You check your phone but don’t see any texts from Hopper besides the usual _get home safe_ message.

Ohhh, if she doesn’t know, you might just never tell her for the sake of bingo.

You also check your wallet because you never could be too sure. Everything, including your cash, is intact.

Actually, you’re about a thousand dollars richer than you were before the party, which is hilarious. Usually that only happens in your brief visits to Los Vegas.

You fuzzily recall a game of poker that’d gotten out of hand, but everything is warped and wobbly. You think you remember leaning against someone really warm, and a spike of static against your skin... The more you try to focus, the harder ignoring your headache becomes.

Monster alcohol always did this shit to you. You’d start to remember a lot more once you got food in you, but only if it was monster-made. Human food did fuck all for mornings like this.

Now time to go find the oval office, because you need to piss like a racehorse, and there’s a newfound time limit your body just imposed with that fall.

You get up and head for the door.

You stop mid-way. Consider.

Pros.

Cons.

_Pros._

**_Cons._ **

... Actually, fuck it. You’re super curious and impatient.

You turn around... and almost laugh.

Well, that’s not _exactly_ what you meant when you decided to say hi outside of the usual circumstances. But it sort of counts?

×

Sans is a skeleton monster who looks less like a skeleton and more like a cartoon version of a skeleton with fluff. Big-boned, literally. His smile can stretch earhole to earhole without the rest of his face seemingly moving at all, besides the dimples. His eyes are just as expressive as his mouth, little pricks of light in the middle of a black void. They can squint and blink and crinkle at the corners like crows feet. You have no real clue how old he really is, but your best guess is upper twenties, maybe early thirties.

He wears either studious nerd attire—including but not limited to an actual tweed vest—or the college equivalent of Fuck Off (I’m Hungover), a total classic; stained hoodie, basketball shorts, and ripped up converse with sagging socks.

Not exactly a looker, according to your monster-enthusiast coworker. (You try and not take it the wrong way, but it tends to come across and fetishistic, which... yikes.) You, on the other hand, thought he was cute once you got to know him better.

He goes to your work in the college library a few days a week to pull all nighters and drink about a gallons’ worth of Bangs, papers spread around his chosen desk like an FBI raid gone wrong.

You used to leave him be when he first started frequenting the library because he looked like one wrong word might topple him into despair about ninety percent of the time. Typical college depression mixed with regular depression creates a weird type of anxiety-depression as stable as a split atom. You knew this from first-hand experience and left him to it.

You also avoided conversation because you didn’t want to make it seem like you were singling him out as someone to talk to just because he was a monster. You hardly went in depth or approached other people on the job, usually opting to shelve books in peace and take calls without distractions. So why go out of your way to talk to him?

×

He’s the one who ended up talking to you first, and obviously it was to get help locating a book that had apparently grown legs and hoofed it to the young adult romance section even though the textbook was nearly as thick as your arm and had _String Theory_ in bold on the front. You’d made him laugh a few times with your shitty jokes during the hunt, and each time he would quiet down he’d get this look on his face, as if he were surprised.

Of what, you didn’t know.

After that, he’d make it a point to stop and talk to you if he saw you. Just little pleasantries here and there, and bad jokes that made you snort and shake your head. He still came in and spread himself out like he was staking a claim of the desk—plus the longer he stayed it usually drifted down to the floor as well—and he still drank way too much caffeine and spent thirty minutes at a time face down in the paper pile, likely contemplating life and the universe.

He stayed the same. You stayed the same. Nothing but the surface really changed.

×

And then one night you found him dead ass asleep in the stacks during your closing midnight sweep of the place, meant to drag any stragglers out of the aisles so you could close the place down at one AM.

You couldn’t just wake him up, though. You’d only ever seen him fall asleep when he was seriously and obviously stressed out, and that was at his desk, not in the aisles while in the middle of research. He definitely needed all the shut-eye he could get.

You draped your own hoodie over his shoulders (it got fucking cold in the basement parts of the library) and kept on going, shooing out three other students and a professor on a grading crunch.

At about a quarter to one, you doubled back to the stacks and stooped down to nudge him on the shoulder. When he didn’t respond, you poked him on the forehead.

He went rigid and opened his eyes split-second fast. Something about it seemed panicked and disoriented, like he didn’t know where he was just yet. His eyelights focused on you but he didn’t lose that edge.

“Hey,” you said, quietly, “what’s up, sleepyskull? I let you stay as long as I could, but I have to close up for real now.”

“what?” His eyesockets widened and he tugged his sleeve up, checking his monsterwatch. You wanted one of those so bad. They had built-in interdimensional storage that could safely stow away a whole ass car, if needed. Nearly all your YouTube ad money was being stowed away to pay for one now that their old model got cheaper.

“shit.” he looked up at you, and for the first time since you’d met him, he looked sheepish. “sorry.”

You reached over and tugged your hoodie off of his shoulders. He tensed up for a split second before relaxing once he saw what you were taking back. You gave him a small tired smile, which he returned, if a little shakily.

“Nah. I get it.” you said, standing up and motioning for him to follow. He got up with a little difficulty, legs stiff, and allowed you to lead the way up the stairs to his desk, where his mess had been left. He cursed under his breath and began stuffing his papers into his dimension box like his life depended on it, apologising again.

“i’m sorry. fuck, i didn’t mean to stay this late...” he muttered furiously, snapping his laptop shut with a bit too much force.

“Seriously, Sans, it’s all good.” you said, zen-like, as you sat on one of the neighboring desks, zoning out. It was about this hour where you switched from Doing Stuff mode to Sitting on the Couch Watching Documentaries mode, so you didn’t have much to say.

He slowed his stuffing and huffing to glance at you. And you might be human and having a slightly incoherent moment an hour past midnight, but you weren’t an idiot. You knew what a Check felt like by now and how it tingled when a monster took a glance at your SOUL.

He quickly looked back down at his last remaining papers on the floor. _Look busy_ was your motto as well when doing something a little risky.

You wondered what he’d seen. Hopper always told you what she saw in your Checks. She said it was a part of their communication, and that since you couldn’t do it outside of Confrontation, you might as well know what she knew in turn. Now, you itched to ask him what he saw.

You never did.

×

Something changed after that. Instead of the usual when-I-see-you-I-say-hi transactional communication you two had had for a few good months, he started to seek you out. Started to ask questions about you specifically, not just books or where the bathroom was (he didn’t need that information, as he had a distinct lack of intestines, but he thought it was hilarious to ask.)

He asked you if you were a student or not (no, you said, you graduated last year) or if you always worked the night shift (lately yes, but soon they were going to have someone else to cover a few days so you can have an actual life.) He asked about becoming a librarian, the ins and outs of being school staff, if you got free donuts or not.

The way he went about it was kind of—well—cute. He’d always have a question for you now, but he seemed to deem one question just the perfect amount per day, as he’d never ask a follow up one. And it was, without fail, a safe question for you to answer. One that had to do with the campus, your thoughts on the school, what you did here, stuff that wasn’t too intrusive of your personal life.

He was careful about it, too. Never loitered near your desk or your book cart for too long, always went back to his desk to wallow in his insane amounts of strewn paper.

Busy guy. Stressed. Funny though.

You wondered how many humans really fucked it up for the rest of you, and if you had enough arm and leg strength to punch or kick them in the junk for being racist dickwads. It was pretty obvious that he was hesitant to really hang around, and you guessed it was the fact that you were human and also always in public, where historically other humans could get real nasty about that.

How dare a human and a monster have a pleasant fucking conversation.

You got the impression that besides the ambassador, who he apparently knew based on one name-drop during a conversation about highschool, you were the only human he really ever tried to connect with.

You didn’t know if you should be flattered or sad.

×

You started to see him on campus when you switched from night shifts to mornings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and he was either alone or with other monsters. Never with humans.

You didn’t know if it was okay for you to approach him then, so you didn’t. He always looked so busy. And he probably didn’t even think of you as a friend, just as you didn’t think of him as one. A friendly acquaintance, sure, but not a friend.

Your first interaction with him outside of the library was brief but made you reconsider your approach.

You stepped in line to grab a cup of tea to tide you over until you got home in a few hours. You had a bit of a line in front of you, so your gaze began to wander with your thoughts. Did you remember to check for that email about the maintenance order you’d put in? Going without a dishwasher was like having the nine circles of hell on your kitchen counter.

It wasn’t super busy, because if it had been you’d not even get to the door let alone inside if you were to wait at the back of the line, but the buzz of voices was persistent enough that all the conversations around you became one tone of white noise. Your eyes moved on from the harried looking barista to the customer they were serving past to their friends and down to the artwork on the wall and—oh, there was Sans.

Looking right at you from where he sat with a dog monster you vaguely knew. (You thought they might be a psych major. They were in that neck of the library woods a lot, at least.)

Sans gave you a quirk of the ‘lips’, looking caught out. It was a different version of that sheepish look he’d given you that one night, but close enough for you to know he was a smidge embarrassed you noticed him looking. You smiled at him but didn’t want to leave your place in line, so you stayed put.

He gave you a tiny little wave from under the barstool counter. You returned it, and his gaze moved from you to the dog monster who’d taken to looking at you too. He said something to them.

The open curiosity on their face made you want to stick your tongue out at them as if you were five for some reason, but you refrained, and stepped up in line when the person in front of you began to order a terrifyingly intense drink with about six shots of espresso. They looked like hell. You refrained from advising them to just take a nap when you remembered that finals were chewing the freshman up and spitting them back out to be born anew: without sparking hopeful eyes and bestowing them the gift of brand new anxiety disorders science was still trying to decipher.

Ah, those were the days.

Your order was much easier, and the barista already knew what you’d want. You wondered sometimes if you should change it up now that you were becoming predictable. Keep them on their toes.

And then you ordered the same fucking thing you did every day anyway.

When your tea was brewed and your unhealthy amount of sugar dumped, you made your way to the door. Sans wasn’t inside anymore, and you bypassed his empty seat with a little twinge of sadness that caught you by surprise. You realized right then that you were kind of hoping he’d stay to at least catch you on your way back and chat a bit.

It kind of blew your mind, actually. You weren’t heartless, and you did have a small social circle built from old schoolmates and club members and what you liked to call Hopper’s nutso extroverted bullshit, but usually you didn’t get all that attached to people, or even regulars, that came and went from your job space. There were too many people, too little time, and too much to do.

Maybe... Maybe you should seek him out next time, you thought. It’d always been him instigating your little chats, but you’d remained standoffish because you weren’t sure where you stood. Monsters were friendly but tended to keep to themselves by the end of the day, unless they really liked you.

You’d been running under the assumption that he was just being friendly because he found you to be That One Nice Chick from the Library who traded jokes and knowledge. And it could be that he _did_ think of you that way, but you kind of wanted to say hi to him outside of that framework and see what he’d do.

Plus, he was cute.

×

You didn’t mean to _fuck_ the guy as a casual howdy-do. “Saying hi” and getting plowed into a mattress seemed like two different things right now. Apparently not last night, though.

Hindsight’s 20/20.

Oh, fuck. Just... Fuck.

How did this even happen? What led up to this? You hadn’t noticed any cues from Sans, but then again monsters are definitely much different when it comes to flirting. It’s either super flamboyantly obvious (Mettaton seemingly heading the trend of being incredibly forward in newer generations) or so subtle it bordered on being heavily self-repressed if you were to judge it by human standards.

Seems Sans was either the latter, or a horny drunk without standards.

Jesus, how much shit did you drink? It must’ve been monster whiskey, that stuff gets you every goddamned time. You’d pledge off it but that would be your third pledge and at this point you’re not even going to bother.

Hopefully the memories come back to you. The things you do remember are pretty fucking great, so the events leading up to it has to be a quite a night. You’d be pretty disappointed if you end up blank-slating it.

You look around now that you have full range of your neck.

Sans’s bedroom is in the attic, which makes sense because the space is long, spanning nearly the whole house, and the ceiling is slanted. The only two windows are on opposite sides. He has a desk shoved one one side, which is overflowing with papers. You think you might see his laptop peeking out from under the rubble. On the opposite side, another desk resides, but this time it’s full of electronic parts and half-assembled cameras. You can spot a few go-pros that have teeth marks in the metal.

The stairs down to the second floor are a real treat. That’s slang for _you almost crack your head open traveling down them at a measured pace._

Thankfully, the bathroom is right there when you finally land on solid flooring that doesn’t fake you out by tilting when you step on the edge

You piss like you have a world record to break and shit like you don’t have anywhere in particular to be. After a few minutes of staring blankly at your sadly low phone battery and lack of reception bars, those water-stained workout magazines at your feet look mighty inviting. You’re the Couch Champion in your hometown, so that’s saying something.

You end up breaking out the hand soap container from the dried soap cocoon that’s formed at the base from at least a few months of neglect to read the directions, refusing to stoop so low as to witness muscle-fetish paraphilia of any kind.

You flush twice just to be safe, and slot the soap container back into its rightful place. Washing your hands, you get a good look of yourself in the mirror and almost hack a laugh at your smeared eyeliner. You look like a fucking racoon.

At least your braid held throughout the night—and also the rough handling, heh—so there’s not much you have to do there except smooth down the top and back frizz and rebraid.

A stolen q-tip and some spit later, you look less like a furry dumpster diver and more like a late twenty-something trying her best not to seem hungover. Which is more than good enough for you.

A cursory glance in the mirror cabinet has you in possession of Tylenol. You wash it down with water from the tap. You’re somewhat tempted to theft a swish of their mouthwash, but it looks brand new and untouched so you figure you’d be sort of a top-tier asshole if you did.

Now here comes the tricky part. Should you or shouldn’t you: 1) snoop about the place to find the kitchen to raid Sans’ fridge, 2) go back upstairs and face whatever type of music that whole event might be, or 3) just straight up leave and figure out where the hell you even are.

If you’d ever taken a decision class where the main goal was to just pick mundane options out of a list, you would’ve failed. You couldn’t do shit like this, especially in the morning. You tend to just go with the easiest option, but fuck, none of those are any kind of easy. All of them sucked.

Your stomach, however, _does_ have a say, and it says rather meanly that if you don’t find something to drink in the next ten minutes there will be issues up in your tissues like no tomorrow. 

You grab the door handle and hang your head, getting ready for a life of crime.

The hallway is quiet, so your footsteps are horribly loud. There is a set of doors on either side of you, all closed, and a stairwell leading down to the main floor to the right. The other end is classed up by a huge window that looks straight out of a Victorian era mansion.

Jesus. Being outshone by some heated sand and woodwork.

Don’t ask why you’re comparing yourself to a window, because you don’t fucking know either.

The stairwell leading down is not as narrow or steep as the one leading up to Sans’s room, and it curves a bit, so you clear it without complaints.

You find yourself face-to-face with a huge, fluffy white dog. It stares at you from its truly gigantic dog bed like you’re something they can’t quite figure out.

Well, you’re not sure if they’re a dog-dog or a monster-dog, so you wave just in case. No comprehensive reaction happens, and you’re left with no answers and quite a few more questions. Also, this might be the go-pro destroyer.

The dog doesn’t seem like a threat to anyone but small cameras, so you keep walking. You’re currently in the entranceway, which looks more like an entrance- _room_ , and the walls around you have a different doorway each. One has tile on the other side, which is promising, so you head that way.

Score.

The kitchen looks pristine, almost sparkling in the mid-morning light. You’re close to covering your eyes from the glare of the sun on the sleek, modern steel fridge and stove hood top. There’s a counter-island in the middle long enough that you think it might span the length of your whole kitchen in your apartment. The cabinets are solid, dark wood, just like the paneling of the hallway.

You open the fridge and find the mother of all beverage choices, Dr Pepper, front and center. Oh fuck yeah.

Unfortunately, you pass it up for water only because you want to keep your no-puking bragging rights today. You close the fridge and open random cabinets until you find the glassware, grab the cheapest looking plastic cup (guaranteed not to break!) and fill it with water from the fridge purifier.

Standing in such a luxurious kitchen and sipping ice cold filtered tapwater that tastes like it could come from an untouched spring in the Alps, it begins to dawn on you that maybe the Victorian window mixed with the nice woodwork of the walls and cabinets and the sheer largeness of the rooms in general should tip you off that this house is a fucking beast. 

Right. Okay. So Sans, or whomever he lives with, is well-off.

Nice. Wish you could say the same. A librarian’s salary and slight success on YouTube means an okay apartment, but you make up for that with perfecting your living space. Looking around the kitchen, you start to notice how empty the whole house feels.

Like they have all this space, but have no idea what to do with it.

Well, at least it’s not Kanye West’s bare ass white bullshit of a house. This place has at least a hundred years of character and craftsmanship to make up for anything the owners seem to lack in interior design. 

Right as you’re about to revisit the whole _should I leave or should I face the music_ conundrum, a floorboard creaks to your right. You turn mid-sip of water to find fucking YouTube superstar Papyrus “CoolGuy76” Skeleton walking in wearing his jogging gear.

What the _fuck_.

“ _Oh_ . Hello, Sans’s fuck-buddy! How is your headache?” he asks, and the _oh_ is completely fake. He absolutely knew he’d run into you.

Your water finds that it’s hard to make it down the right pipes when you’re inhaling out of pure shock, and greet him by hacking out your lungs and nearly choking to death in his kitchen.


	2. Sans Wakes Up Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so the universe either hated him or loved him way too much. He just didn’t know how to tell it that even though the thought was sweet, the execution was going to kill him.

You’re cute, chubby, unapologetic where it counts, hilarious, and easygoing.

You always smell so damned fantastic, and he lingers as close as he can sometimes to catch a whiff of your hair as you stock books, but he always feels like a creep and leaves soon after.

It’s just—fuck, you’re so his type it’s not even funny. And his soul likes yours a lot.

From all of your past conversations and interactions, it’s pretty clear you keep to yourself most of the time when on the job. He’s tried his hardest to respect that part of you the best he can, without completely ruining what he has with you.

Which isn’t much, but he’s _trying._

You give him your hoodie as he sleeps (god, that smelled so good he felt like he couldn’t move, and you were so close, so fucking close to him), let him stay an hour past closing because you don’t want to wake him up. Made it clear that it’s fine, you’re not mad about it.

He went that long without ever Checking you, and he was planning on doing so much later into knowing you just because you were human and have no way of pinging it back without having a Confrontation. It’s unfair of him, but it’s like an itch he can’t get to. He needs to know.

It’ll kill him if he doesn’t.

***She thinks you work too hard, but it’s endearing. She’s looking forward to watching the science channel and falling asleep.**

Fuck, you’re perfect, he thinks. But he doesn’t say anything.

*

Keep it light, professional. Whatever that means.

Make it known that he’s interested with consistent contact, easy questions and Intent but nothing too overbearing. He’s doing it the way he was taught and he can’t shake the feeling that you’re just not getting it the way he means it to come across.

When he left the cafe and had to endure Dogmy making fun of his huge crush, he silently told himself that he’d make it more obvious to _you_.

To Dogmy, his little smile and wave was like he’d publicly asked you out. It was all Intent; when monsters interact like that, they can feel it from across the room. There’s no need to make huge declarations with words when the Intent can be felt loud and clear. But you’re human, and not a mage, so that particular magic is lost on you.

Humans are harder to figure out; Mettaton’s approach is overbearing for most, but the more subtle, traditional touch is lost in translation, or just seen as being friendly.

At least, he hopes that’s the issue, and not that you know but aren’t interested. That would suck so fucking much.

He wavers like that for a good week. He sees you at your work and does the usual greeting, but doesn’t ask you a question. He feels that if he tries, he’s going to straight-up ask you out at this point, and he’s too much a chicken-shit to do it.

Papyrus tells him he’s being a complete fool, and Sans has to agree, but then his bro pulls out the Revised Dating Manuel and suddenly, wow, would you look at that, he has so much school work he has to do, and he has to do it literally anywhere else but at home. How unfortunate! Bye.

Should he even make it more obvious if you’re intentionally ignoring it in hopes that he gets the hint that you’re not interested? Or are you unaware that his interactions with you aren’t his usual way of doing things?

You’re _human_ . He thought it would make him more uncomfortable, being interested in a human, when he pulled out the midnight hypotheticals with some faceless person in his imagination. And it did, _hypothetically_.

Don’t get him wrong, he _does_ get a little unsure when he’s got a few days between interacting with you. But all that crumbles to worthless dust when he feels the hum of your soul the moment he steps into the library, let alone talks to you.

He wants to get to know you better, that’s all. But his soul wants you so bad that it's beginning to hurt.

It’s frustrating to be at odds with the core of your very own being.

*

Then he got drunk at Fuzzy’s house party and saw you sitting there on a bench near the poker table in a crop top drinking whiskey, talking amongst his friends, looking like you belonged there, and sort of lost his mind enough to get bold.

_Real_ bold. _Stupidly_ bold. His version of Barney from How I Met Your Mother bold, but without the sexisim and refusal to be committed.

Not that he was thinking of marriage or anything. The thought of him, _Sans_ , getting hitched, is both funny and terrifying. His friends and family would hold an intervention at the goddamned pew, and then send him off to a mental hospital just to make sure.

It’s just, well, he seriously wanted a regular conversation with you. Something to connect your body and soul with the mind to match. The subtle flirting wasn’t working, that’s obvious to both sober-Sans and intoxicated-Sans.

Intoxicated-Sans saw sober-Sans as a pussy ass bitch who needed to get his shit together. And without sober-Sans around to object, he found it easy to take this disaster in his own hands—by creating a completely different disaster.

(Sans is and will always be his own worst enemy.)

It started with a simple, “oh, hey,” as if he hadn’t been watching you for the past five minutes from across the open garage, trying to work up even a single nerve while his logical brain fought him like a true warrior.

Booze won that war, obviously. Booze, his soul and also his dick.

You’d glanced up at him and then smiled once you recognized him, looking pleasantly surprised and a little tipsy.

“Sans! Hi!” you punctuated that with a little wave, reminding him of the last time he saw you, in the café. He felt his flushed cheeks get warmer at the thought. “How are you?”

“uh,” he glanced down at his drink, which was half full and also his fourth refill. Honesty? Honesty. “drunk as a skunk.”

You laughed. It shook the rickety bench and made you grip the edge of the poker table for something to level your upper half. Maybe you were a bit farther off than a _little_ tipsy. Sans should bail on account of being a responsible adult and also a pussy ass bitch.

“Sweet, me too. Wanna sit?” you scooted over on the bench and patted the space right next to you. It looked like that poor bench was going to need a hospital visit in a few minutes.

Like hell he was going to pass that up, though. Even if he broke the fucking thing, he’d still sit there with you.

*

There weren't any words ever spoken about it, really. Which was usually how it went for monsters, unless you’re one of two nerds named Alphys or Undyne.

The key to showing you Intent was apparently _touch_. Humans picked up on magic when they got in physical contact with it, so it made sense, but without the alcohol impeding his decisions and causing him to disregard most known boundaries, that revelation would’ve taken months to figure out.

He touched your forearm, just a little tap of fingertips, to get your attention as you watched the betting pool get higher in the middle of the table. The Intent he put into it was second nature to him.

You, thank fuck, weren’t mad at him for touching you when he finally did. In fact, your head snapped to him and your eyes lit up in a way he’d yet to see, and he immediately got addicted to that look. He wanted more.

“you think you can win?” he asked, just for something to say. He sort of forgot why he wanted your attention in the first place.

It could’ve been nothing at all. He wouldn’t hold it past himself to poke at you just to have you look at him. He was an idiot starving himself because he didn’t have the guts (heh) to be forward in a way that mattered to you. It felt wrong, in a way. He was taught so much differently.

You glanced back down at the cards in your hands, which were admittedly not half bad, to the modest stack of plastic pieces, and back up to his face.

“I don’t like to think I’m superstitious, Sans,” you said, a small smile quirking your lips, “but in this case I just might be. We’ll see.”

“ah, no jinxing it, then,” he said sagely, slurring the j in jinx only slightly.

He was fine, it was all good.

You had to scoot over for Drunk Bunny to enter the game, which meant he had you pressed up against him. The smell of your hair became suddenly a lot more prevalent in the air and your body was warm against his left arm.

“Sorry,” you said to him, but it was in a distracted sort of way, eyes never wavering from the table.

Alright, so the universe either hated him or loved him way too much. He just didn’t know how to tell it that even though the thought was sweet, the execution was going to kill him.

  
  


*

About an hour into watching you play poker completely ass-blasted drunk and getting drunker, he was beginning to wonder why the hell you worked at a library and not as a professional poker player. You had about seventy-five percent of the chips on the table and a poker face so good it even fooled him, the guy who could literally see your cards.

He wasn’t even playing, but he was paying attention the best he could. At first he thought he might end up giving you pointers and help you cheat, as he was good at that but not actually playing, but he was as useful as one of those girls that clung to a Don’s arm during a game with the mafia, kissing the dice or the cards or the Don’s cheek for luck.

The funniest part was that people were beginning to bet serious money, now that booze had loosened their lips and apparently their wallets. You were going to either win it all within ten minutes and be a thousand dollars richer or lose spectacularly once your newest monster vodka shot Hopper had dropped off to you kicked in.

(Hopper hadn’t even spared him a glance. It was both good on his ego that the most spunky and volatile of the bunny family didn’t see him as a threat to their friend, and also a blaringly obvious jab at his ego because she didn’t even recognize him as a potential lay for her friend. Double edged sword meet ego. Hopper had a thing for setting up her friends, and everyone knew when she was trying to sell a pitch.)

Everyone else folded and you got the money with a full fucking house.

You didn’t look at all surprised, stuffing your new wad of cash into your wallet and thanking the others for playing. You're such a good sport that no-one is upset at losing a good chunk of money to you. You don’t gloat one little bit the whole time.

He’d already known why _he_ liked you, but now he was beginning to understand why other monsters had snatched you up as well.

“win a lot of poker?” he asked, curious at your casual demeanor and just a smidge attracted to your easygoing confidence.

“Well, I try not to jinx it, honey. But luck does tend to run in the family,” you said, flashing him a disarming grin.

His soul stuttered in his chest at that smile paired with the offhand endearment. Oh, he was fucked.

Totally, absolutely, definitely fucked.

*

You’d ended up in his lap at one point, during a disorganized round of Cards Against Humanity in Fuzzy’s crowded living room. It was the most logical thing to do in both your drunk eyes. There wasn’t enough space around the coffee table for both of you but there was enough space for one.

“We’re stacking each other like Legos,” you’d said, a smile in your voice, perching your ass on his lap like it belonged there, and he couldn’t argue that. It was a solid point. Dare he say innovative?

Aaaand it awakened something in his libido he’d yet to find before that very moment.

Sans wasn’t a horny person. Typically. Unless his soul got involved.

He had a good grip on what he liked, what he didn’t, what he thought was okay but not what he particularly wanted. He liked to think he was pretty easy-going in the sack, and had enough control to hit the brakes on his magic in public, or even in private.

But your soul thrumming inches from his was becoming his undoing.

He was playing this time, sort of. It was more of a double-teaming mission, where you both got your own deck but only one of you played at a time. Sans can’t recall why you two chose to do it like that.

(The drinking had finally rocked him off the edge of coherentness and into the territory of _modestly aware_. Sans was a tank. But so were you, if the ability to stand up without crumpling was any indication.)

You cracked up at one of your potential answers to the black card that’d been pulled. You showed him, and he can’t fucking remember for the life of him what it was, but it made him break into giggles with you. And then you kept showing him banger after banger of an answer card every turn, shifting in his lap, leaning back against him as if you were comfortable, reaching around his shoulders to steady yourself and speak to someone behind you.

You were winning most of the rounds, your black cards stacked precariously on Sans’s head. He made them stay with magic, which delighted you to no end.

Just knowing you had the same type of humor flipped a switch in his brain, the throw-bullshit-so-they-throw-it-back button if you will, but the casual way you touched him and talked and smiled made him realize how touch-starved he really was and how easy you pulled his strings without even trying.

It got increasingly hard to focus. It was about fifty percent the alcohol and fifty percent your fingers trailing up his spine like you knew where to touch. He lost what he was talking about and just stared at you as you continued to talk with the people next to both of you, absentmindedly making paths with your fingertips against bone.

Up until that moment, he’d been fine with a public setting. You and him weren’t the only two (or more than two, in some cases) people getting a little publicly handsy. This was an open party environment with adults in their college years, and a lot of hard hitting booze. Plus monsters who got near drunk off Intent, so it was sort of expected.

But now he wasn’t just content with light petting, no, he was getting _horny_. You were turning him on with just a little touch, at the most vulnerable part of his body.

He’d felt the urge to turn throat. To give you everything you wanted. To let you do anything to him.

It almost felt like Intent. It was so close to it he could nearly taste it. But you were human, so that wasn’t it.

Sans never in his life, _ever_ popped a boner in public.

He can’t boast that anymore.

***

Sans finds himself alone in his bed at eleven AM.

Wallowing in self-pity. Just absolutely bathing in it. He might not even need a shower this morning because he’s drowning already.

Why he thought you might stay is beyond him. Nothing pointed to you doing so. You sleeping in after a night of drinking means nothing in the long run, even if it’s in his bed, naked.

...Even after you moaned as he pulled your hair and pushed into your tight heat, going as deep as he could, and you hitched your hips to get him deeper—even when he accidentally lit Intent against your skin like a firework because your noises were shooting straight to his hindbrain like a button being pressed, turning him on more than he ever thought were possible, and you came around his dick like he’d pushed you over the edge, tightening around him like a vice in pulses...

Fuck.

Sans groans and presses his palms into his sockets, just enough that it’s uncomfortable.

He might not be a proud man, that is forever clear, but he does know he’s a decent sort of dude. And one-night stands are something he never, _ever_ considers. Especially with someone he has serious interest in.

When he’s sober. _Never considers when he’s_ **_sober_ ** _._

*

So.

So he needs to get up at some point, right?

He doesn’t want to. He wants to wallow and feel bad and sleep off this hangover. He wants to figure out a way to fix whatever’s been broken by last night and find a way back to how it was before.

Somehow.

Fuck knows what the steps to that could be. Going back in time and telling past-Sans that he _could_ have the best sex of his life drunk off his ass, but also _don’t_ because he kinda wants the opportunity to date the person in question to remain a possibility?

Yeah, all he needs is to tear a hole in the multiverse and risk this dimension’s total demise. No big deal.

Even if the machine was fixed he wouldn’t do it. Too much risk, not enough of a reward.

He flips over and presses his face up against his pillow. It takes him less than a second to realize that was a mistake, because that pillow smells like you.

Oh, fuck. Fuck, that’s good. Lavender and sweet vanilla and a low tone of your pheromones. He takes a big, deep breath and his soul throbs with sharp, sudden arousal, magic traveling south—

_Nope._

He shoves it off the bed roughly, and it lands on the floor. He’s not going to jerk off to a faint smell on a pillow from Walmart. He might have questionable moments in his life but this isn’t going to be one of them. He fucking refuses.

He should’ve given up on his degree and worked a hotdog stand as a full-time gig. He would’ve been better off not going literally slowly insane after meeting you.

He’s going through his horny teenager phase except he’s thirty with three degrees, one in progress, and a mortgage. A weirdo with a scent fetish and crush on a human girl he barely knows. A guy who’s soul thinks his dick is the best outlet for his complicated feelings.

A man who, up until six months ago, hadn’t even thought about sex for four very stressful years.

Heck, he should’ve just kept his life underground with the few who decided to stay.

... Yeah, no.

He’s being an idiot. This isn’t that serious.

Now he can’t go to the campus library. Boo-fucking-hoo, there’s a public one down the street.

Maybe when he sees you on campus he’ll have to deal with the guilt and shame of going too fast and literally screwing himself into a corner, but he’ll live. It’s not like you’re bonded, and it’s not as if no one else is out there that’s compatible. It just might take a few more decades to find them. There’s a reason monsters live so long.

He should just get over this and move on. Even through that hurts to think about. His soul squeezes in pain in his ribcage, and he has nothing to do about it but lay there and breathe.

It’s fine. He’ll be fine.

He’s been through worse.

*

When he finally gets the hell out of bed, he trips on a shoe and nearly brains himself (without the brain) on the edge of the nightstand.

The funny thing is, it’s not his shoe.

Wait.

It’s yours. And the other one is off to the left, turned over on its side from you kicking it off last night.

He stares down at it, at all loss, and doesn’t know what to think.

Did you _seriously_ hoof out of here so fast that you left your fucking _shoes_?

That’s more of an insult than leaving before he wakes up, right there. He tries to imagine you being the type of stubborn asshole that would go barefoot in an Uber and can’t tell if it fits disturbingly well or not at all.

See, if Sans wasn’t such a limp noodle when it came to actually asking you out, like, ever, then maybe he’d understand you well enough to know the answer.

_Or_ , the microscopic part of his ‘brain’ in charge of the emotion _Hopefulness_ chimes in, _she’s still here, just not in your room. Dumbass._

...Oh. Yeah, that could be—

As if on cue, there’s a thunderous beat of footsteps up the attic stairs, followed by furious knocking.

“what’s up, bro?” Sans calls out, realizing that he might need pants and starts searching the floor for them. He finds one of your socks instead. He measures it against his own foot absently. It’s almost half the size of his own feet, holy shit.

“Sans, your fuck-buddy is, coincidence of coincidences, a YouTuber! And we’re filming a collab in the kitchen! If you wanna man the hand-cam for dynamic shots and zoom-ins that would be greatly appreciated! Pants are _not_ optional! Please put them on.”

Sans stares blankly at the closed door, non-comprehending. There’s no light up in this... literal attic, heh.

“Sans!” Papyrus tries after a second. The doorknob jiggles but it remains closed, because Paps is a sucker for privacy. He better be, with how much Sans drilled it in his little impressionable mind when he was still in stripes.

“uh. yeah, sorry. i’m rebooting, give me a minute.”

“Sure! Don’t forget to install updates, I think you’ve missed your last few,” he says, because his bro is genuinely hilarious, and then launches himself from the top of the stairs to the bottom as he always does, if the surprised curse from you and his hurried “I’m fine!” is any indication.

Sans turns back to face his bed and finds his pants halfway shoved under the foot of his bed.

Okay.

So now he doesn’t have to freak out about nearly half the things he was going to spend the next few days freaking out about.

He has a whole new boatload of things to freak out about instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear. I had so much trouble with this one, but does that count if it only took me 10 hours and 4k deleted content to get it where i wanted it?


End file.
